Thomas Godfrey (Ed) (22 page)

“Not abetting,” smiled
the secretary wanly. “Just standing by. I found out by chance—and then he
forced me to be silent—I had his will, you know, and I’ve destroyed it.”

With this the strange
creature glided downstairs.

The doctor sprang at once
to Sir Harry’s room; the sick man was sitting up in the sombre bed and with a
last effort was scattering a grain of powder into the glass of cambric tea.

With a look of baffled
horror he saw Bevis Holroyd but the drink had already slipped down his throat;
he fell back and hid his face, baulked at the last of his diabolic revenge.

When Bevis Holroyd left
the dead man’s chamber he found Mollie still leaning in the window; she was
free, the sun was shining, it was Christmas Day.

Ceremony upon Candlemas Eve

Down with the rosemary, and so

Down with the bays and mistletoe;

Down with the holly, ivy, all

Wherewith ye dressed the Christmas Hall:

That so the superstitious find

No one least branch there left behind:

For look, how many leaves there be

Neglected, there (maids, trust to me)

So many Goblins you shall see.

The Ceremonies for Candlemas Day

Kindle the Christmas brand, and then

Till Sunset let it burn;

Which quench'd, then lay it up again

Till Christmas next return.

Part must be kept wherewith to teend

The Christmas log next year,

And where 'tis safely kept, the fiend

Can do no mischief there.

Upon Candlemas Day

End now the white loaf and the pie,

And let all sports with Christmas die.

Robert Herrick.

It
is unusual to see the name Stanley Ellin without a word like brilliant or great
preceeding it. He has been synonymous with quality in the mystery field for
some 34 years. In 1981 the Mystery Writers of America honored him as one of
their Grand Masters.

A story such as “Death on Christmas
Eve” is an instructive joy to any student interested in the art of writing. The
pacing, the characterization, the description and plot development all mesh
like the parts of a Swiss watch to produce a work of art that really “ticks.”

He started his career with a bang
back in 1948 with the much-admired story “The Specialty of the House.” He has
been delivering new small masterpieces at the rate of one a year to a grateful
readership ever since.

Perhaps this deliberation explains
his success, for an Ellin story is never out of print for long. Anthologists
would be hard pressed to put together a first-rate collection without him.
Fortunately, they seldom try.

In 1979, his first 35 stories were
assembled into a collection called
The
Specialty of the House and Other Stories.
Like Chopin’s nocturnes,
Escoffier’s recipes, and Hitchcock’s suspense films, it is an assemblage of
work so distinguished as to redefine the word greatness in that art.

As a child
I
had been vastly impressed by the Boerum house. It was fairly new then, and
glossy; a gigantic pile of Victorian rickrack, fretwork, and stained glass,
flung together in such chaotic profusion that it was hard to encompass in one
glance. Standing before it this early Christmas Eve, however, I could find no
echo of that youthful impression. The gloss was long since gone; woodwork,
glass, metal, all were merged to a dreary gray, and the shades behind the
windows were drawn completely so that the house seemed to present a dozen
blindly staring eyes to the passerby.

When I rapped my stick
sharply on the door, Celia opened it.

“There is a doorbell
right at hand,” she said. She was still wearing the long outmoded and badly
wrinkled black dress she must have dragged from her mother’s trunk, and she
looked, more than ever, the image of old Katrin in her later years: the scrawny
body, the tightly compressed lips, the colorless hair drawn back hard enough to
pull every wrinkle out of her forehead. She reminded me of a steel trap ready
to snap down on anyone who touched her incautiously.

I said, “I am aware that
the doorbell has been disconnected, Celia,” and walked past her into the
hallway. Without turning my head, I knew that she was glaring at me; then she
sniffed once, hard and dry, and flung the door shut. Instantly we were in a
murky dimness that made the smell of dry rot about me stick in my throat. I
fumbled for the wall switch, but Celia said sharply, “No! This is not the time
for lights.”

I turned to the white
blur of her face, which was all I could see of her. “Celia,” I said, “spare me
the dramatics.”

“There has been a death
in this house. You know that.”

“I have good reason to,” I
said, “but your performance now does not impress me.”

“She was my own brother’s
wife. She was very dear to me.”

I took a step toward her
in the murk and rested my stick on her shoulder. “Celia,” I said, “as your
family’s lawyer, let me give you a word of advice. The inquest is over and done
with, and you’ve been cleared. But nobody believed a word of your precious
sentiments then, and nobody ever will. Keep that in mind, Celia.”

She jerked away so
sharply that the stick almost fell from my hand. “Is that what you have come to
tell me?” she said.

I said, “I came because I
knew your brother would want to see me today. And if you don’t mind my saying
so, I suggest that you keep to yourself while I talk to him. I don’t want any
scenes.”

“Then keep away from him
yourself!” she cried. “He was at the inquest. He saw them clear my name. In a
little while he will forget the evil he thinks of me. Keep away from him so
that he can forget.”

She was at her
infuriating worst, and to break the spell I started up the dark stairway, one
hand warily on the balustrade. But I heard her follow eagerly behind, and in
some eerie way it seemed as if she were not addressing me, but answering the
groaning of the stairs under our feet.

“When he comes to me,” she
said, “I will forgive him. At first I was not sure, but now I know. I prayed
for guidance, and I was told that life is too short for hatred. So when he
comes to me I will forgive him.”

I reached the head of the
stairway and almost went sprawling. I swore in annoyance as I righted myself. “If
you’re not going to use lights, Celia, you should, at least, keep the way
clear. Why don’t you get that stuff out of here?”

“Ah,” she said, “those
are all poor Jessie’s belongings. It hurts Charlie to see anything of hers, I
knew this would be the best thing to do—to throw all her things out.”

Then a note of alarm
entered her voice. “But you won’t tell Charlie, will you? You won’t tell him?”
she said, and kept repeating it on a higher and higher note as I moved away
from her, so that when I entered Charlie’s room and closed the door behind me
it almost sounded as if I had left a bat chittering behind me.

As in the rest of the
house, the shades in Charlie’s room were drawn to their full length. But a
single bulb in the chandelier overhead dazzled me momentarily, and I had to
look twice before I saw Charlie sprawled out on his bed with an arm flung over
his eyes. Then he slowly came to his feet and peered at me.

“Well,” he said at last,
nodding toward the door, “she didn’t give you any light to come up, did she?”

“No,” I said, “but I know
the way.”

“She’s like a mole,” he
said. “Gets around better in the dark than I do in the light. She’d rather have
it that way too. Otherwise she might look into a mirror and be scared of what
she sees there.”

“Yes,” I said, “she seems
to be taking it very hard.”

He laughed short and
sharp as a sea-lion barking. “That’s because she’s still got the fear in her.
All you get out of her now is how she loved Jessie, and how sorry she is. Maybe
she figures if she says it enough, people might get to believe it. But give her
a little time and she’ll be the same old Celia again.”

I dropped my hat and
stick on the bed and laid my overcoat beside them. Then I drew out a cigar and
waited until he fumbled for a match and helped me to a light. His hand shook so
violently that he had hard going for a moment and muttered angrily at himself.
Then I slowly exhaled a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling, and waited.

Charlie was Celia’s
junior by five years, but seeing him then it struck me that he looked a dozen
years older. His hair was the same pale blond, almost colorless so that it was
hard to tell if it was graying or not. But his cheeks wore a fine, silvery
stubble, and there were huge blue-black pouches under his eyes. And where Celia
was braced against a rigid and uncompromising backbone, Charlie sagged,
standing or sitting, as if he were on the verge of falling forward. He stared
at me and tugged uncertainly at the limp mustache that dropped past the corners
of his mouth.

“You know what I wanted
to see you about, don’t you?” he said.

“I can imagine,” I said, “but
I’d rather have you tell me.”

“I’ll put it to you
straight,” he said. “It’s Celia. I want to see her get what’s coming to her.
Not jail. I want the law to take her and kill her, and I want to be there to
watch it.”

A large ash dropped to
the floor, and I ground it carefully into the rug with my foot. I said, “You
were at the inquest, Charlie; you saw what happened. Celia’s cleared, and
unless additional evidence can be produced, she stays cleared.”